


Strange Bounty

by ahimsabitches



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: Gen, the weirdest gift exchange in the galaxy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 09:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17221121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches
Summary: This is a gift for my dear friend Tyellas-- they asked for Bonnie and Silver exchanging gifts, and while this isn't exactly that, I hope you like it anyway!





	Strange Bounty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tyellas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/gifts).



Bonnie giggled and pranced in the surf, clutching John's cybernetic arm with both hands like a child. “ _Cold_ cold coldcold _cold,_ ” she chattered. The words exited her mouth in velvety-thick clouds which caught the orange-pink glow of the sunrise. “And _chunky_.” 

“Aye, lass. Ocean's already icy. Big freeze comin', seems.” John's view of the shore to his right, and the beachhouse a few kilometers away, back against the sawgrass and dunes, was obscured by his own swirling pink steam-cloud. He pulled in an icy, burning breath, smelling cabinsmoke, tasting salt, and sensing wind. “Comin' _soon_.” He glanced down at her, trousers hiked to her thighs, leaping over the foamy head of each tiny wave as it rolled onto shore. He smiled. The water, rich with strange minerals, was crystalline blue, and the fist-sized chunks of ice floating in it gleamed like sapphires veined with lace. It _was_ beautiful, but the cold was slowing his cybernetics and the sand was already gritting in the joints of his metal leg. Even watching Bonnie have the time of her life playing in the slushy ocean wasn't enough to make him want to linger. “Why'd ye pull us outta our nice warm bed, where there's no bloody sand 'r freezin' ocean t'mess wid me bits, eh?”

Bonnie turned a full-wattage grin on him, half-hidden by her breeze-teased hair, and tugged his arm. “I promise this will be worth it, John. Just a bit further,” she chirped. He sighed and quirked his mouth. How could he ever say no to those eyes? He shrugged the wool-and-fur coat she'd gotten him for his birthday last year higher around his neck and hobbled on, the sun rising into orange-yellow at his right shoulder, the breeze hissing through the dune grass to his left, Bonnie giggling in front of him, and the ever-present sigh-and roar of the ocean all around him.

It would have been perfect if not for the cold...and the  _sand._

Just as he opened his mouth to make his plea more insistently, Bonnie stopped and pointed out to sea with one gloved hand. “There, John. Look at the water.”

He turned into the rising sun and shielded his eyes. At first the sunlight bleached his sight, but he shut his living eye and filtered his cybernetic one. A dark blob floated just beneath the surface beyond the line between the light blue of the shallows and the darker, midnight blue of deeper water. “What is it, lass?”

“That's a school of herring. Their food. Hopefully I picked the right spot...” she muttered, leaning forward eagerly.

“Lass, who is _they_ \--”

“ _John_ ,” she shrieked, and pointed. “They're here!”

Long, slender shapes burst from the water in graceful arcs, spun playfully in the sun-colored spray, grabbing at their prey with eerily man-shaped arms, and fell back, their mottled blue-grey-black hides sleek and gleaming. Bonnie laughed, jumping up and down in the surf, drenching herself in freezing water and not caring an ounce. She stuck one arm up in the air and waved furiously at the things. “They're here! They're here! Hi! Hey, remember me? Hey!”

“Lass, wh--” He refocused on the things, which were almost moving too fast for him to track. One of them rode a rolling breaker to shore, a strange, elongated bluegreen face staring at them from the foam, with huge black oildrop eyes, a short but viciously sharp beak where a mouth and nose should be, and a frilly pink set of gills puffing out from its neck. The ocean took its wave back and the strange creature stood, revealing two arms, two legs, strange translucent green webbing stretched between them at the knees and elbows, and a stubby but powerfully built body that was nevertheless almost as tall as Bonnie was. The creature blinked and a pale film flicked across its eyes. 

“Ah, you _do_ remember me,” Bonnie grinned, and tugged John's arm. “This is John,” she said to the creature. He's my...uh, mate, I suppose.” 

The creature cocked its head and made a sound that was not made to be heard through air: a soggy, throaty click. John found himself unable to look away from the creature that had crawled out of the sea, regarding him with wet black eyes that seemed to swallow half its face.

“I have something for you,” Bonnie said, but when John turned, it was the creature to whom she held out her hands. Cradled in them were six eggs. She glanced at John, her green eyes alight and her grin wide. “John, you have some in your pockets too. Its okay; they're hardboiled.”

He reached into the fur-lined pockets of his coat-- all four of them-- and sure enough, he pulled out eight eggs, two in each pocket. “What the devil is...”

The creature suddenly bolted back into the surf, but Bonnie's grin didn't fade. She just smiled and waited, her hands held out to the empty blue ocean. Bafflement spinning in him turned to awe as the next wave deposited half a dozen creatures before them, all in various shades of blue-grey-green, their hides patterned with blotches or wavy stripes of black.

“Hi everybody,” Bonnie said, her voice soft with reverence. “I'm sorry I took so long to visit. I brought my mate--” she flicked her eyes at John, and the creatures all swivelled their gazes in eerie unison, “and we brought you presents.” Bonnie lifted her hands, and the first creature approached her slowly but steadily. It reached out a hand-- webbed so completely it was more a hand-shaped fin-- and plucked two eggs gingerly from her left hand. It brought the eggs to its face, appeared to sniff them, and then they disappeared. John blinked. Another creature, taller and more slender and paler green, approached him. He stood still, allowing the creature to ogle his cybernetics.

_Well, some things never change,_ he thought. The creature took two eggs from his living hand, and the brief brush of wet cold eelflesh against his fingers made him shiver. Each of them took its turn, taking two eggs from the landlubbers until their hands were empty. John watched them carefully but could not understand how the eggs were there one moment, right by their beaks, and then just  _gone_ the next. What  _were_ these things?

The first creature made another set of wet chittering sounds, its gills wiggling, and two other creatures responded in kind. They leaped backwards into the water and surfaced again a few minutes later, cradling piles of long flat rubbery-thick seaweed. The stench of low tide smacked John in the nose and he swallowed. Bonnie's grin widened, if that was even possible, and she waded further out to meet one of the creatures who waddled up the shore. John's eyebrows nearly launched off his forehead as Bonnie plunged her hands into the bundle of floppy green stuff. She crowed triumphantly and came up with a handful of small black pouches, tipped with two curved pairs of little horns at each end. “Devil's purses,” she said, “or at least that's what Mama called them,” she said, and shoved the handfuls into her pockets. She pointed at the creature standing by John, holding out its own pile of seaweed, and dug back into hers.

John crinkled his nose at the smell reeking off the seaweed, but the creature's huge oildrop eyes seemed innocent enough. He eased his living hand into the pile and couldn't help groan a little at the icy icky slick-slimy feel of it. Something poked his thumb and he grasped it. It was a devil's purse: a leathery rectangular black pouch no bigger than Bonnie's palm, horns like thick whiskers curling from the corners. He squeezed it experimentally. Small hard round things rolled under his fingers. “Lass, what's inside?”

“ _Pearls_ ,” she squeaked gleefully, clutching double fistfuls of Devil's purses. “These are actually egg sacs, but sometimes the eggs don't hatch and since this ocean is so cold and so full of minerals, instead of decaying they _calcify_ and turn into _pearls_ and that's good for these guys because these egg sacs are actually from an invasive species of cephalopod that competes for their food.”

“And the eggs we gave 'em...?”

“They just really like eggs,” Bonnie shrugged, stuffing another handful of black things into her coat, which was soggy now. “As far as they're concerned, they're getting the better end of this deal: a favorite snack for a bunch of ocean garbage.”

John coughed a chuckle and dipped back down into the seaweed, gasping at the cold, and fished around until he had picked clean every thick strap of seaweed. Both of their pockets bulged as they backed up onto shore. The creatures dove into the waves and were gone in a silvery flick of webbed feet.

“Thank you,” Bonnie shouted, and waved. “We'll be back tomorrow!”

John started. “Eh?”

“Oh aye, John; did you think that little bit was it?” She laughed. “They live in a whole kelp _forest._ ”

John gaped at his beaming wife, brilliant morning sunshine bathing her and turning her hair to a deep auburn halo. “Bonns...wh...”

“Now that we know where they are,” she said, shaking the water out of her boots, “we can take the skiff out tomorrow. So you don't get wet and sandy. They'll help us load the nets; we just reel them in--” she held an imaginary fishing pole and hauled back on it, “collect the purses, and drop the unanchored kelp back in. They'll be harvesting the purses from the kelp still attached to the ocean floor now. It's a bitch of a thing to open all the purses and sort out the good pearls from the arsey ones, but we've got time, eh? I figure we sell enough of 'em, we could help your parents build that new wing on their inn, and help Jim with his mum's inn too. Yeah?”

John shook his head, disbelief and wonder buzzing warmly in him despite the frigid breeze and the even colder water soaking them both, and swept Bonnie up in a tight hug. Icy water sloshed down his trousers but he didn't care. “Sometimes I ferget ye've been t' half the planets in th' bloody galaxy,” he mumbled into her neck.

“Just the half you haven't been to, _mo iarann mathan,_ ” she said, and kissed him. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, me love,” he said, and plunked her down on dry sand. They walked back to their cottage hand in hand, in a pocket of warm love.

Bonnie patted her thigh, as if remembering something. “Ah, don't let me forget to bring the eggs.”

“I won't ferget, lassie. I's wond'rin' why ye packed ten dozen eggs fer a two-week trip.”

“Well, it's Christmas for them too, y'know,” she said, and gestured out to sea.

 


End file.
